Skip to main content

Lasting Impacts of Slavery on Modern America

If I could only choose one lesson to teach someone about American history, it would be about slavery and the lasting impacts on Americans today.  Although there are many great things about America, our history and legacy has been built on the backs of slave labor. Slaves were treated as property and less than human.  It shocked me when I first found out about slavery in elementary school.  I was horrified!  How can one person think to own another? And the treatment of slaves was usually horrible.  Families were broken apart through sale of children or other loved ones.  Slaves were beat and whipped, sometimes worse.  Female slaves were often taken advantage of sexually by masters. Since slavery in America was predominately based on skin color, American culture was and is more slanted towards racism against African Americans.  This was to keep the slaves held to lower standards and later to rationalize mistreatment or unequal treatment of African Americans.  Many whites still feel that they are inherently smarter or better than blacks and unnecessarily fear African Americans.  This is multigenerational conditioning from parent to child to think that skin color affects a person's character that started with slavery in this country.  No one is born with racist views or any preconceived notions.  I believe the violence against African Americans by police stems directly from the years of conditioning of society to not trust or automatically fear African Americans.  What really brings home the racist views in the United States today is the current election of Donald Trump.  He is a man who was known to discriminate against African Americans in the real estate market, as well as known to propagate other racist and sexist comments and actions.  Yet, so many people across the United States voted for him.  Now, there were many more issues than this to this election, and I wouldn't say that everyone who voted for Trump is a racist.  But since the election, the racists have come out of the woodworks and now feel that they can be out in the open with their own racist views.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ted Bundy Film Analysis

Ted Bundy is a movie that chronicled the life and crimes of serial killer Theodore Robert Bundy.   The film starts out showing Bundy as an impulsive kleptomaniac.   The movie continues with alternating scenes between fairly normal life with his girlfriend and her daughter and times where Bundy is stalking, attacking, raping and killing women.   He sometimes broke into women’s houses with a lock picking kit.   He would often attack women on the streets or trick them into letting their guard down before attacking them.   The scenes with assaults are shocking, as Bundy nonchalantly attacks and kidnaps women, usually in broad daylight.   One scene with Bundy putting makeup on a severed head in his house is particularly chilling.   When Bundy ends up moving to Utah, his killings appear to have ramped up, and he killed in multiple areas in Utah and Colorado.   Bundy picked up a woman at a shopping center, claiming to be a police officer working on a case.   When she realizes that they hav
Post a Comment
Read more

Emmett Till

I think the most important event in African American history since Reconstruction is the aftermath of the murder of Emmett Till.  Till was only 14 years old when he was tortured and killed by two white men in Money, Mississippi after flirting with a white woman at a store.  Till was beaten severely, shot and dumped into the Tallahatchie River, tied to a cotton gin fan.  African Americans were killed often in the South, many times by lynching.  The violence in the South towards African Americans was so prevalent that the two men that killed Till felt they were in the right and had no fear of being punished for this horrific crime.  When Till’s body was sent back to his mother in Chicago, she was shocked and horrified at how horrible her son’s body looked, due to the savage way Till was treated before and after he was killed.  Mamie Till Bradley made the decision to have an open casket funeral and to allow media to photograph his body before and during the funeral.  She wanted the world
Post a Comment
Read more

Disaster Management: A State of Emergency

Before the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was created in 1979, over 100 agencies had to work together to help people during and after major disasters (Smith).  The result was a conglomerate of uncoordinated efforts that didn’t work very well.  FEMA was created after a series of major natural disasters.  Ironically, after FEMA was created, less severe disasters happened and FEMA didn’t seem quite so important.  Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush used FEMA to make appointments as political favors and the people they appointed to head FEMA had no experience, training, or background in emergency management (Smith).  When a severe storm finally struck, FEMA was unprepared.  After a category 5 hurricane hit Florida City in 1992, it took 5 days for troops to show up to assist.  Over 125,000 homes were destroyed and thousands of people were left without federal assistance or necessities, like water or food (Smith).  Jane Bullock, former Chief of Staff of FEMA said of FEMA’s re
Post a Comment
Read more